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Talk:Parallelism in Southern Victory
I hope you guys won't think if self-serving of me to say that these sections are surprisingly difficult to write. Since the purposes of this page can be best served by documentation of parallelism that is as detailed as possible, I need to keep opening other tabs and googling around for specific points. Whenever I finish a section I'm surprised by how much time it took to produce only a few paragraphs. That being said, I'm enjoying this. The Morrell stuff was particularly fun to write--scanning through an article on Rommel, looking for as many parallel points as I could find. It was almost like an Easter Egg hunt. There's some real layering and dimension to this parallelism, far more than registers at a glance. Of course, I've been working on stuff from the first half of the series; it will surely get tiresomely blunt from VO on. I'd suggest we also create similar pages for Atlantis, ItPoME, and MwIH. That last one should be quite easy, considering how obvious HT was with most of it. Turtle Fan 04:14, June 6, 2010 (UTC) :Agreed. Admittedly, in ItPoME, much of the story article addresses the parallels, but I think that article could be pared down considerably. TR 20:05, June 6, 2010 (UTC) ::Yes, I was thinking these pages might allow us to wean ourselves off the "Literary Notes" that address the parallels and break up the in-universe feel. I think it would be more useful, to say nothing of interesting, to have a master list with links to the relevant articles rather than these notes scattered hither and yon. Turtle Fan 20:14, June 6, 2010 (UTC) So is there room for pictures and captions? Since everything will align with a historical figure or event, there should be no shortage of applicable images, and I've already got a couple of ideas. Oh, and Alfred Forbes: Since he dates back to early TL-191, I was hoping he'd help us in our drive to 800. And while there was indeed a historical Alfred Forbes who was alive during WWI, he was neither British nor an art collector, so he won't help us any. Turtle Fan 05:18, June 6, 2010 (UTC) :I am fine with images. TR 20:05, June 6, 2010 (UTC) McSweeney Blaise, thanks for getting the ball rolling on this article again. I hope it takes off. It's still not really a venue for speculation, but for cataloging parallels found within canon. There's a little more leeway for that here given the subjective nature of the material (for instance, one could talk about the US losing the Great War scenario) but we still need to step lightly around that. I cleaned up a few other things as well: for instance, we can't call McSweeney "homicidal" because the only times we ever saw him kill anyone were on the battlefield, and they were killings of combatants, not his own side or prisoners or the Red Cross or anything like that. And while there's no doubt he was an odious bigot, he pet the dog a couple of times, like wishing Paul a Merry Christmas. Not much, but I guess you've got to take what you can get. Actually, now that you bring it up, in the Great War books nativism in the US was at a fever pitch; even the most sympathetic characters had their streaks of it. Then McSweeney dies in B and in B&I there's very little of that left. Makes me wonder if HT had that in there as an avenue to get McSweeney into power and then did away with it when he abandoned that route. Turtle Fan 14:00, September 19, 2010 (UTC) :: I agree that an ordinary soldier killing enemy soldiers in a combat situation cannot be called "homicidal". But McSweeney goes far beyond that. Turtledove makes the very clear point that usually soldiers did not like to take up a flamethrower and burn people to death, that McSweeney was one of the few who did like it, was happy with it and was very reluctnat to give it up when he became an officer. Also that he felt like "an avenging angel" while burining down people. This to my mind justifes calling him a homicidal type who got a "legitimate" outlet on the battlefield (and therefore, Turtledove could not imagine what he would do in peacetime). :::Still, homicide is an act, not a mindset. McSweeney was an unusually violent man, but he showed commendable self-control in not becoming violent in situations where violence was not appropriate or acceptable. Turtle Fan 02:16, September 20, 2010 (UTC) ::Also, to my mind it is a accpetable extrapolation to think that somebody who personally liked to burn people to death and who felt that this was a kind of Divine mission might under some conditions create a theocratic dictatorship where e the practice of burning heretics at the stake would come back in a 20th Century America. Of course I have no direct information that Turtledove had something like this in mind, but I think it is well within the range of ideas which he could have come up with. :::No President could bring in such a policy. The First and Eighth Amendments are very clear on that. So we'd need McSweeney to lead a revolution, which is within the realm of possibility, and to have enough of a following that he could impose his brand of persecution on the nation at large, which is much less likely given the religious attitudes of every other character we met. I don't see how he could have done more than use a kind of beefed-up Alien and Sedition Acts to discriminate against religious groups, based on appeals to his citizens' nativism. That much should be met with strong support. Beyond that? There'd be too many people willing to fight him on it, and too few willing to fight for him. :::Anyway, extrapolation doesn't belong here, really. The stuff on 191-A is present to help illustrate parallelism between what happened in the series and what happened in the historical record. If we're extrapolating beyond what series canon supports--especially in direct contradiction to series canon--well, if the necessity were to come up, it would be extremely important that we took a minimalist approach to doing so. Turtle Fan 02:16, September 20, 2010 (UTC) ::::I agree. The extrapolations take us quite a ways from the original intent of the article, which is examining parallels. Guessing what McSweeney would have done does not inform the reader as to how the published series is like OTL. TR 16:54, September 20, 2010 (UTC) ::I agree that the widespread of nativism in the US and its later disapperance could have been preparing the ground for something which was later aborted. The other side of the same coin is that in the later parts of the Great War there are several scenes where new respect is developing between Whites and Blacks in the Confederacy, and I think this was the potential beginning of a respectable Confederacy where Black veterans would lead the way to reconciliation and full emancipation of all Blacks - and of course, if the Confederacy had won the war and Black soldiers could claim a share of the credit, this would have been plausible. I also suspect that Turtledove had plans for Reginald Bartlett in this context, and killed him off becuase he did not fit in with the line finally chosen. Blaise MacDuff, the Purple Dragon 15:13, September 19, 2010 (UTC) Documenting Parallelism I know the discussion on making articles on parallelism in different series of HT ended a long time ago, but I want start it up again. :Go right ahead! I found it took up more time than I had, but if you want to take a crack at it, feel free. I'll do my best to lend a hand. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:19, August 19, 2013 (UTC) How about we make article on parallelism in all AH stories? Or at least a article on parallelism in Videssos? Zhukov15 (talk) 18:21, August 19, 2013 (UTC) :I don't think a mega-article is the way to go; an article for each story is best, given that not everyone is interested in every story. Videssos is neither an AH nor a retelling of historical events in a fantasy setting, so I'd mark it as a very low priority for this treatment. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:19, August 19, 2013 (UTC) :The main parallelism I see, at least for the Legion Cycle, is to the different societies from history although I have the impression some events have parallels to Byzantine history (no surprises there!) ML4E (talk) 19:49, August 20, 2013 (UTC) :Can I make an article on parallelism in Atlantis then? ::I personally have no objection. TR (talk) 02:36, August 21, 2013 (UTC) :I can see things I can put in a possible 'Parallelism In Videssos' but I'll do that when I have spare time. Zhukov15 (talk) 00:32, August 21, 2013 (UTC) US Socialists Modeled On European Socialist Parties I have to say, I'm extremely impressed with the thoroughness and detail of the new section. Turtle Fan (talk) 23:14, June 3, 2014 (UTC) Third option for the CSA It occurs to me that, had Turtledove originally planned for the US to lose WW1 and walk on the steps of Germany, as it is proposed in the McSweeney section, it is not precluded that the CSA would become a real democracy post-war. There is a third option, and it is that the reds win. Then you have a CSA that is not an analogue (and possibly ally, depending of the outcome of the Russian Civil War) of the Western Allies but of the Soviet Union. The Western Allies role would fall to Canada, who would have emerged victorious from the war thanks to overseas support and remained independent. Think of the three top heads in the Congaree: Cassius, Scipio and Cherry. While the paralellism is not as clear cut as other characters in the series, it could be possible to make them analogues of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. Cassius is obviously the leader. Scipio's "house negro" background sets him apart from the others and his dislike for some of Cassius' methods is mentioned, despite his general admiration for him. It would be very easy to make him clash with the wrong people and fall from grace later. Cherry, despite being a poor Black Confederate woman, breaks readers expectactions and is presented in a very negative light. She's petty, manipulative, mad for power and easily the most bloodthirsty Black character we meet in the series. Once Turtledove decides to kill her, he slips the commentary that she is crueler leading her comrades than the post-slaver planter class that preceded her. Being Cassius' mate, she is in the perfect spot to gain power by whispering in his ear and seize the rest after something kills him. Despite dropping out of the Great War early as a result and putting further pressure in the Entente, the racial (and feminist?) liberation brought by a successful revolution in the CSA would be seen as an improvement over the former Confederate States (whose institutionalized racism is said to be seen as "not as part of the civilized world" by many people in the Entente, despite their alliance, like the Russian Empire was likewise seen in France and Britain in real life). This would justify popular opposition in war-weary Entente countries against intervening in the South and restoring the CSA, either during the war or after its end, as there was against intervening in Russia. Reggie Bartlett would be the necessary white POV in the CSSA, personifying the lower class whites that accept the new order (at least initially). Anne Colleton would be the aristocratic white POV that longs for the "good old days" and helps radicalize the post-war United States after fleeing there. No idea what Featherston or Pinkard would do but it would be obviously different. Of course, this is just speculation and has no place in the article, but I wanted to share it and maybe ask your opinion.Eljuma (talk) 19:54, September 2, 2014 (UTC) :Sorry for the delayed response. What you say could work, but I'm skeptical. The Communists commanded overwhelming popular support during the October Revolution not because their ideology appealed to something deep within the Russian body politic, but because they were making all the right moves. Russians desperately wanted to get out of WWI, and wealth inequality in the empire made redistribution a winning issue too. :In the CSA that isn't the case. GWI was very popular until the very end when it was no longer possible to conceal what a disaster it had become. Forcing the country out of the war in 1915 would be seen as an affront to national honor. While the descendants of the planter aristocracy held too great a concentration of the nation's prewar income--and Featherston proved that under the right circumstances a populist appeal could turn the middle and working classes against them--it wasn't as conspicuous as it was in Russia. Not if you were white, anyway. There's also the matter of the possibility of upward mobility, real or imagined; anyone who believes he will some day join the ruling class tolerates its excesses in the interim. Russian peasants and factory workers had learned that the gulf between them and the lords of their country was impossibly wide. Convincing white Confederates to support communism en masse is way too radical a change. :And there's racism. That can't be ignored. I wish it could; but the more closely one examines American history in the twentieth century, the larger racism looms as an influence on southern politics. It prevented the Southern states from forming an electoral alliance with the Western states and making the Populists a viable party. It even led the Solid South to turn from blue to red--and attitudes toward nearly all non-racial issues shifted accordingly! If Southern history were played out in the CS instead of the US, expect racism's effect to be even greater. :So we're asking white Confederates to make some very drastic reversals in their political attitudes in a very short period of time. To make such a radical leap, you'd need at least two things: a catastrophe, and a charismatic leadership. If they win GWI, or even if they drop out before the war of attrition tells and they can't stop the US, the catastrophe's not there; and the charismatic leadership isn't there, because they won't follow where black men lead (remember Cassius complaining about just that?). And the whites have the numbers, so if they don't follow where the blacks lead, the country doesn't move. :As for Cassius, Cherry, and Scipio in positions of national leadership--There were dozens of socialist republics that sprouted up all around the CS at that time, remember. If they'd become successful enough to start coalescing into a unified national force, you'd expect the commanders of the republics in the most important parts of the country to emerge as national leaders. That wasn't South Carolina. It's fairly clear in retrospect that, by AF, history was passing Charleston by; and the Congaree SR didn't even control Charleston (though they might have taken it eventually, I suppose), but the inland swamplands leading up to it. I'd look for Virginians, Georgians, and men and women from southern Alabama and Mississippi to have a huge advantage when it came to seizing power in the newly formed national party. Cassius for one was something of a political genius, so it's possible he'd have managed to wrangle a seat in the Politburo or an appointment as commisar of a minor department (possibly as a compromise candidate if the Upper South and Gulf Coast distrusted each other), and worked his way up from there. But he wouldn't be Lenin, not from the beginning. It's conceivable that Cherry and/or Scipio would manage to ride his coattails into the halls of power themselves, but I find it impossible to imagine that all three of the most important figures in the national party would come from the same small backwater. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:34, September 4, 2014 (UTC) Mormons as Ancient Israel I don't know about anyone else, but I'm really not buying 2.10. Turtle Fan (talk) 15:23, August 27, 2015 (UTC) :It's tenuous. The only real "connection" is pointed destruction of the temple. As the Mormons broadly mimic any number of minority groups in conflict with the government/majority, they aren't the best to find parallels for: human history is a depressing litany of such situations. We'd drown in analogies. TR (talk) 16:35, August 27, 2015 (UTC) :I have a bigger problem with Terry DeFrancis = Curtis LeMay. DeFrancis is in an out of the way, minor theatre while LeMay was in one of the two main theatres of war. LeMay's strategic bombing was a key Air Corp mission while DeFrancis engaged in a tactical mission when there wasn't much of anything else for air-power to do. : For the Mormons, the article section does seem to have more justification although I will defer to the two of you on historical alternatives. ML4E (talk) 16:53, August 27, 2015 (UTC) ::Yeah, I've been meaning to bring up the DeFrancis=LeMay thing. It always seemed superficial at best to me, but I'm not that familiar with LeMay's bio, so I was uncomfortable disputing it. But now that I've seen the comparisons laid out, I think that the parallel is not worth discussing. TR (talk) 17:12, August 27, 2015 (UTC) ::: About the Mormons - yes, history is all too full of minority groups in conflict with the government/majority. Sure. But 1) a religious group with a religious motivation for rebelling 2) Concentrated in one specific geographical area 3) Strong enough and fanatic enough to rebel again and again and put up a hell of a fight yet 4) Having no real chance of winning, only of getting their country devastated 5) Having a Temple which is very dear to them but gets destroyed because of their rebellion and 6) Having a power rival to their rulers egging them on to rebel but not really able to help them. How many of the minority groups throughout history which went into conflict with the government/majority fulfill all these six conditions? I don't think you will find too many. Anyway, this page - unlike others in this Wiki - is open to speculation. You don't absolutely need hard proof, as long as your theory is reasonable and you bring supporting evidence. Either the entire Mormon component of "Southern Victory" is completely an original invention not based on any historical parallel (certainly Turtledove has a fertile enough mind), or it is based on some kind of parallel. If the second, the parallel cannot be in Twentieth Century history - there just isn't a comparable situation in Twentieth Century history. So, if there is a parallel it has to come from some other time and place. Where is the other time and place? To my mind, Jewish rebellions against the Romans are a very reasonable candidate. We know Turtledove knows quite a bit of Roman and Byzantine history - that was his subject of academic study. We know that he is very much concerned with Jewish history - like scenarios in which the Holocaust was avoided, or was much worse but still some Jews survived, or David was defeated by Goliath, or Israel will be conquered by the Arabs, or people like the Kaunians who are blond and blue eyed but are in fact like the Jews, and so on. So I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that he here cast the Mormons as ancient Jewish Zealots and the United States Army as Roman Legions. (Blaise MacDuff, the Purple Dragon (talk) 22:18, August 27, 2015 (UTC)). ::::With all due respect, Blaise, "Here are six cherry-picked similarities to support my interpretation and none of the many that are out there that would weaken it" is a classic logical fallacy. You have overlooked the fact that the Mormons had a history of military clashes with the US government going back to before the POD, whereas the Jews fought only one significant military conflict against Rome. Or the fact that Rome had made efforts to co-opt Judaism into its official state religion system (the eagle over the Temple gate), whereas the US respected the Establishment Clause no matter how badly the LDS antagonized it. Or the fact that the US government was prepared to resettle the Mormons as of TG, whereas the Romans took no such steps against the Jews following their victory; the Jewish diaspora was far, far more ad hoc than the ethnic cleansing that Flora was spitballing with Taft. ::::You say there are only two possibilities: that HT imported a historical event wholesale into his story, or that he came up with an entirely original plot element. There's a third option, which is that he drew inspiration from a number of sources. The Jewish War could be among them, but it's one of many. If we're going to say that HT had only one, anachronistic, source for his story element, I would want a specific evocation to confirm this, such as Truman announcing "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him" after Heydrich was killed just in case anyone had somehow missed the point that MwIH was an analog of the Iraq War. Or the artist in Anne Colleton's first scene who said that the US's capture of Pearl Harbor would "live in infamy" for the Royal Navy. Something like a fortress full of Mormon fighters committing mass suicide rather than surrendering, or relics from the Tabernacle carried in next year's Remembrance Day parade. ::::Now you're right that this page was set up to be somewhat free-wheeling, and you frankly do a better job of both making your case and marking it as speculative than a lot of other sections. Turtle Fan (talk) 03:56, August 30, 2015 (UTC) :::::What was our final verdict on this section? I don't think any of us found the arguments Blaise put up terribly persuasive. I didn't see much point in chipping in on TF's counter argument. TR (talk) 21:51, October 31, 2016 (UTC) Years Later It's gone. We let it ride. TR (talk) 02:11, April 15, 2018 (UTC) Concrete Battleship I assume we all agree that we need to edit that section down to the OTL paragraph? TR (talk) 16:31, October 30, 2016 (UTC) :I agree that it needs to be chopped down but the parallels to TL-191 need to be spelled out within the remaining paragraph. ML4E (talk) 18:27, October 30, 2016 (UTC) :I think I agree on both points. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:27, October 31, 2016 (UTC) Haiti as Israel "The Caribbean island nation of Haiti is an important U.S. ally and in the Central Powers/Quadruple Alliance in the First and Second Great Wars. The relationship between Haiti and the United States parallels that of Israel's partnership with America as both Haiti and Israel are surrounded by hostile neighbors (Entente-controlled colonies and the Confederate States/Arab countries)." This is really thin. We've had lots of allies who were surrounded by hostile neighbors. Using that as a basis to say Israel=Haiti is stretching the analogy past the breaking point. TR (talk) 19:36, November 21, 2018 (UTC) :Exactly. Given the Second Great War = WW II, a homeland for black survivors of the Population Reduction created after the war would be a parallel. This is not. ML4E (talk) 22:53, November 21, 2018 (UTC) ::And even that never happened. Black ex-Confeds showed no desire to move to Haiti at all. And Israel wasn't a US ally in the world wars, and Haiti wasn't important to the CP (who were never called the "Quadruple Alliance;" the Entente got hit with that adjective once, but not the Alliance). ::This is ridiculous. So much so I'm half-tempted to suggest Jonathan has another sock puppet to play with. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:35, November 22, 2018 (UTC) :::Fictionboy is its own person. Of that I am sure. TR (talk) 06:26, November 22, 2018 (UTC)